Video streaming has increasing appeal to enterprises, especially if it can be integrated with video conferencing systems. Technology exists to theoretically make such integration easy, but in practice there is a complex set of factors to consider.

In a recent TMCnet video interview during Interop (News - Alert) 2011, Tom Racca, President and CEO of BurstPoint, talked about what his company is doing to make video simpler for enterprises.

“It’s important to have an all-in-one platform,” he stressed during the conversation.

A truly integrated platform, he said, takes into consideration all aspects of video creation and distribution: capture, editing/publishing, distribution/delivery, and consumption. BurstPoint has developed just such a platform, which stores, archives, manages and streams video to user devices and HD digital signage screens.

The latest version of BurstPoint’s Video Communication Platform Conference Point is an integrated solution for video conferencing systems that supports live streaming for up to six simultaneous sessions, multi-stream transcoding using a fault-tolerant appliance, and on-demand playback. The appliance also supports hot-swap RAID drives and power supplies.

“We stream H.323 and H.239 video off any videoconferencing system,” Racca explained. “We can capture it, record it for later viewing, and stream it to tens of thousands of users.”

The multi-stream transcoding feature means webcasts can be synched with PowerPoint slides.

Racca noted that very large enterprise and medium-to-large enterprises view video differently. The largest companies, and government agencies, see video mainly as a tool for overcoming the challenge of communicating within their organization. (Examples: compliance training, CEO broadcast messages.)

“Medium to large companies are more externally focused,” Racca said. “They want to capture video and make it available to constituents, customers and partners.”

For medium-to-large enterprises, the focus is therefore more on things like pushing out video FAQs, how-tos and product announcements. There is also the challenge of varying formats required by different types of user devices.

Racca said HTML5 and MPEG4 are the most flexible formats, but that requirements may shift depending on which devices users prefer.

“The end user is driving how they want to be able to access video,” he noted. “Not all constituents have desktops or laptops. They want to see it on an iPad or an iPhone or an Android (News - Alert) or a BlackBerry, or other tablet devices.”

In some cases, users may not have mobile devices for viewing video at all. This is where integration with digital signage comes into play; video messages can be distributed to locations like plant floors, warehouses and retail environments using screens already in place. There are also applications in higher education and public safety.

Racca predicts that the proliferation of user devices, combined with increased demand for video solutions, will result in some significant market changes.

“Video is going to become easy and more prevalent within enterprise communications,” he projected. “It’s the most effective means of communicating to your customers, partners, employees.”

Watch the full interview for more discussion about the challenge of delivering video to mobile devices, the benefits of synchronized viewers, and the trend toward video as a service.